The movie is pretty much a take-it-or-leave-it affair: It's not bad for a summer no-brainer, but it's definitely not the vast improvement on the prior film its producers would like you to believe it is. It's pretty good, yet unremarkable.

While screenwriter Diablo Cody has been accused of being overly precious, here her cleverly worded script is streamlined to fit into the slash 'n' sex genre of horror. While the quips come fast, funny, and furious, it never slows down the plot or Kusama's thoughtful direction, which often reveals the underlying truths behind Cody's deceptively glib teen-speak.

Messing with classics is dangerous business. The fact that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland isn't a straight retelling of the Lewis Carroll books might be motivated, as stated, by a desire to give the tale more narrative heft, but it also feels like a pulled punch.

Sexual abuse and incest are realities, and there's no reason why art shouldn't confront them. But when pop culture addresses them (and Precious, with its against-all-odds cheerleading and music-video casting, is very much a pop-culture commodity), the results deserve scrutiny.